Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

129 страница из 236

Berossos, I have argued so far, devised a culturally composite approach that enabled him to articulate the history of the world from a hybrid Babylonian–Greek perspective. He did not simply translate Babylonian thought into Greek categories or impose Greek thought onto Babylonian tradition but rather explored areas of convergence between two cultures. His means of doing so were subtle; he would fill gaps in the historical record and select from among competing versions of a given myth. Sometimes, a subtle change in emphasis was all that was required. At other times, Berossos could be bold in his defiance of cultural boundaries: his account of human creation is perhaps the clearest example. Berossos, however, was no utopian thinker, and his text was not calculated to promote nebulous notions of human community. Rather, it addressed some of the very real concerns of his Seleucid Greek audience.

Berossos’s Seleucid voice can clearly be heard in some passages in the Babyloniaca. Let us return to the model king Nebuchadnezzar II. This is how Berossos describes his building works in Babylon (BNJ 680 F 8a (139–40)):